Javi that night & The Rest of Your Always
by Rhyolight04
Summary: Post-'Always': it may be happily-ever-for-awhile for some, but they leave a trail of battered, tired friends along the way. Spoilers for Season 4. Didn't know it'd continue. Real title: "Today is the First Day of the Rest of Your Always." Ensemble cast
1. Chapter 1 Sunday night

"You what?"

If he answers, 'I got suspended,' it won't be the beginning of the tale. It won't be the end. FUCK. "Can we just…"

"Just what, Javi?" Lanie asks. "I see you at the wedding, a couple of times since, you're waiting for me to make some move, I am NOT ready to get married and you seemed very sure those were the terms—"

"I was an idiot, Lanie, I need to have you in my life more than I need to say how." He coughed. Voice not breaking. The rain is cold. He is not crying, but it's getting to be a near thing.

"You're not okay," she says, her voice leaving 'Woman Not Scorned But Very Pissed' and going into diagnostic mode. "Are you all right?"

"No. I am not all right." He shudders.

"Is anyone dead? Where are you?"

"I don't know. Outside the Twelfth. Can I come see you? Nobody's dead." _No thanks to me._

"Yes, damn it, of course you can. How soon will you get here?

"I don't know. Subway."

He makes it to her building somehow. He lives too close to family, too many cousins, too many explanations. Never felt them so heavy since he came back from the war. Lanie is like a blanket of peace, he thinks; she put her hands on his face and says, "Oh, Javi,"and pulls him into her home.

"Just hold me?"

She rocks him gently in her arms. He can distract himself, she can distract him, they hold one another tight long into the night and finally he's hungry. It's after midnight.

"You're awake," she says into the dark, next to him.

"Got any soup?"

"I think."

"That'd be good."

Eating helps, even if he thinks he must look dumb, wrapped in her bedspread. He insists on eating the soup in the kitchen. 'No soup in bed' is his new rule, he explains.

"It's a good rule, but are you gonna explain what the hell happened to you?"

"Not if you're going to yell."

"That bad?"

"Oh, yeah. No. I guess."

He can see, because he loves her, that Lanie is ready to scream from frustration, and yet she's still patient with him, and from a distance it wrings his heart. He needs to be distant from his heart for awhile.

"I really — I really love Beckett," he says, and it seems like the logical place to begin.

Because it's Lanie, who understands more complexity than he's ever found necessary to deal with, she takes it fine, the way he means it. "Well, you and most of the other men in the department, and me, and Castle, yes. That happens."

"It's different for me. You're her best girlfriend —"

"Which, on a good day, gets me to within fifty feet of her. Love her I do, but… the distance she keeps makes it hard."

"More about that?" he asks, because the memory of Beckett's clear-eyed madness is cramping his throat again.

"Okay. Hmm. You work with her, so you see the clever and the crazy from a different angle than most of us. You love the bravery. You were able to talk through her PTSD in a way none of the rest of us could. You're both warriors."

"That's it," he says. "I love her like that. Nobody ever said I'd look up to a woman the way I do her. Nobody ever better say a thing about it, because she is …"

"Your brother."

"Hell, practically my father." He thought of his father. A decent broken dead man, no more capable of understanding his son than he was of understanding all of Lanie's beloved cranial nerves (Lanie, when drunk, would doodle cranial nerves on cocktail napkins. It was weirdly fascinating, like the deeper meanings in baseball statistics). "I've had bosses, officers before, but Beckett earns it. I saw a lot of officers in the Gulf who didn't have what she has. Saw a few who did."

"So what trouble she get you into?"

"We got a name and a location on the guy who maybe shot her and we went after him. The guy whose DNA was under the vic's nails?" He could feel Lainie tense without even touching her. "I recognized the logo on a keychain he was holding and we sorted him out from a bunch of other car rentals."

"That was clever."

"It needed to be, we had a pic but she didn't want to put it through channels."

"The rot went deep. I can't blame her."

"Then maybe you'll understand why we went off without backup—"

Lainie's breath hissed through her teeth.

"—Or permission."

"I can see where this is going."

"It went there, all right."

"Where, in the meantime?"

It turned out Javi has less trouble thinking about getting skinned, roasted, and suspended by Gates than he does discussing how the Beckett they both loved had been damn nearly killed by a grandstanding asshole, thank God, who didn't wait to see his victim let go of the roof he'd thrown her off of. He knows Lanie really loves him, because all she does was hiss a couple more times as he tells the incompletely-cobbled-together story of Ryan and Gates arriving in the nick of time. While Javi was elsewhere. Concussed. Useless.

"And they let you out? They sent you _home_? After you were unconscious for how long?"

"Just a few minutes —"

Lainie rarely curses, but when she did he is always impressed. Then she shines a flashlight into his eyes and seems a little calmer, and tells him he would be waking up several more times that night. "And then that heinous bitch tore a strip off you and took your badge and told you to go cool off? You should fucking sue, Javi."

"I was just glad to get out of that office."

"I don't suppose you know what happened to Kate."

"She quit. She told Gates she could just keep the badge."

"Oh, Christ. Everyone go do stuff in the heat of the moment, make stupid moves they'll find it hard to take back…" They are silent for a moment, but the unbelievability of an un-copped Beckett is too much to take in. "So you don't know what happened to her?"

Javi is barely aware of what happened to him. Lanie sends Kate a text. "If she's asleep I don't want to wake her, and she'll answer when she gets it… possibly. I could strangle that tin-goddess dictator."

"She was probably right," he says. "We were out of line." Strange to hear himself say that. Strange to feel the certainty and the urgency seep away from his bones. "Ryan…"

"I would like to slap _him _silly," Lanie mutters.

"He saved Beckett's life."

"Where the _hell _was Castle? I thought that was his job."

"Beckett said he was off the team."

"You can say all you like about Beckett being whatever the hell she is, Joan of Arc or I don't know who, some kind of Valkyrie you think is worth offering everything you have. But the two of them are making it hard for everyone else who isn't somebody out of the The Ring—"

He wonders what hobbits had to do with it—

"—He wasn't there, I bet they had one of their stupid fights where neither of them says anything they actually mean and everyone goes off with hurt feelings and then she gets herself killed. Only she didn't, thank God."

"And Ryan shoved us under a bus and saved her life." Both. True. BOTH. If he ever sees Kevin again the 'I-told-you-so' will probably sink the friendship before either opens his mouth.

"But he didn't catch the guy."

"I'm not sure Gates believes there really was a guy, except she saw Beckett hanging from a roof."

"When I quit being angry I am going to be ill."

Javier is not sure she will ever stop being angry. He is feeling quieter, for the moment. Lanie's intensity is doing it for him; she is vibrating with fear for him, for Beckett, with fury at Gates and Castle, with, he guesses, just overwhelm-ment of the day, even second-hand. He can feel the aches from the swift, effective beating he took from Cole Maddox, and, with her permission, takes some Tylenol (she says not ibuprofen, and he is tired enough he doesn't ask why). She finishes the soup. Every time she catches her breath she ends up losing her temper once again. "This is nowhere near over."

"Can I go back to bed?"

"Yes. Yes, you can, I'll just wake you up again in a couple of hours."

"Will you come with me?"

"Did you really say—"

"That I wanted you around more than I cared whose terms it was on? Yes."

"That sounds less like a brain injury than your usual attitude."

"Is that good?"

"I'll let you know in the morning."

And as he goes to sleep Javi can feel her thinking, sorting through the possibilities. Lanie does that too much. Maybe he doesn't do it enough, but loyalty has worked for him most of his life. Part of him knows how much worse everything will feel in the morning, but for now, just for now, in this calculating, furious, dear woman's arms, he can relax.


	2. Chapter 2 Very late Sunday night

'_He cradled her unconscious body in his arms,_' Rick thought, _'searching for signs of sexual violence.'_ Hickeys. _'For the traces on her porcelain? Fawnskin-soft? On the skin so long untouched _(well, better part of a year, so far as he knew)_, so long desired, now ravaged from her own need, in the hunger of relief so deep — in the relief of a hunger so deep—'_

So deep in him he was now mentally writing crap. But he was holding his dear one, holding his Kate, and she was relaxed in his arms, and yeah, there were some bruises. Thank God they had avoided rug burn. There were some bruises he knew he had nothing to do with, the marks along her left wrist left by Ryan's hand as he had lifted her to safety. A bunch of nasty ones that suggested she had not included all the details of her fight with Cole Maddox. The ones that didn't show, wouldn't show, except in the way she made the life she had reshaped the day before.

He had always been able to lose most of his worries in a woman's body. (Lord knows he had practiced.) At least for a couple of hours, pure play, pure fun and skill and joy. He'd wanted to be a generous lover from the time he understood _those_ feelings were about 'sex' and that that was usually better with another person. Conspiring with another body to tease the most ridiculous and sublime and tooth-clenching feelings out of one another, even when he knew he'd never see that other body again. As he grew older he'd come to realize not everyone built their techniques? Habits? Encounters? on that foundation, which was disappointing. He had a certain respect for hasty, needy couplings but none for perfunctory, phoned-in, phony (how were things supposed to get better if you didn't give and receive accurate feedback?). Oh, and sex performed on someone else's script — if you moved a certain way because you thought that was how you were 'supposed' to move, unless it was one of your first times to the dance, he, thought, it was boring. He never could get into 'scenes,' because improv was usually so much better.

Was it possible to guess someone's bedroom style from their demeanor outside it? He had become better at it, which had narrowed his roaming appetite. And he had loved some women deeply enough not to resent their inexperience, or their inhibitions. Outright kink kinda scared him; in his late twenties and his early thirties he had been ashamed of being, secretly, closer to vanilla than he thought Richard Edgar Castle ought to be. But these days he was proudly out to himself and anyone who got close enough to ask: there were a lot of kinds of vanilla, particularly if you included rum-raisin and occasionally (you devil), butter-pecan…

Beckett sighed and stirred in her sleep and ripped him back to the moment.

Richard Edgar Castle was screaming BEST! MOMENT! EVARRRR!, with a lot of footnotes about the whole series of moments from the knock on his door last night.

Richard Alexander Rogers was also happy, but he admitted he was pretty much physically and emotionally toast. Nicely-done, buttered toast, but in need of some down time. In so many ways.

Rick Castle, who was probably who he was, was happy, sated, joyful, hopeful, exhausted, and worried sick.


	3. Chapter 3 Very early Monday morning

By now it was morning, Kate decided, though the body in the bed next to her was sleeping deeply. He had earned it. She permitted herself a small, smug, smile. She felt the smile widen, and she wanted to laugh, throw herself around in the bed, fly around the room, wake Rick again… . If she could just stay in this moment… Kate pulled her mind from the tug of all the other things that wanted her tethered and somber. She breathed the clean air that smelled like Castle and his—laundry detergent? or whatever that was - not sweet or strong, but identifiably his, caught in a thousand whiffs over the years— and shut the rest away.

If she could stay in that moment… she would still have to go to the bathroom. She eased herself out of Castle's sheets, marvelling at the wonder of an _en suite_ bathroom. The mirror gave her a contradictory story: the remains of her eye-makeup lingered; her hair had somehow, sometime, found an elastic, so the tentacles of the octopus were at least confined. She was bruised all to hell; there was a rib that seemed to hurt when she breathed, but if it had survived the night before… Under the shadows and the lingering emotional smoke of the day before, she saw she looked happy. Relaxed. Exhausted. _I look like an egg_, came a thought from her college days._ I've just been laid._ It was too hard not to smile again. She thought she looked younger._ Just be here. Just be now._

There was a sealed, new toothbrush in the vanity drawer. She had taken its owner the night before._ Mine too. Oh, Castle._ She brushed her teeth as quietly as she could. It was hard when she wanted to smile. And hum. And dance around on her— _ow_, okay, not so much stretching her arms out to embrace the world. Compartmentalize. Stay in the right now. The Right Now was excellent. She had done this thing, where you try to keep you mind on something good and off— other things, before. Never to linger somewhere so good, though. The other times had been an effort to keep her mind away from—things, to just stay in a less bad present. This was better. Her teeth were clean. She opened the bathroom door as quietly as she had closed it, went back to the bed.

The sheets had reorganized, smoothed, easier to get back beneath. "I'm glad you came back," Rick said, when she had settled again. Kate reached for him."My turn! Not fair, you don't have morning teeth!" He scrambled out of the bed. She tried not to watch him. He hadn't been staring at her.

"And you will come back, too?"

"Don't ever need to ask that again, now," he told her. She felt his hand just touching her cheek. The touch wanted to linger. "Damn it. Won't be long." He dashed. She stretched, carefully again, and smiled. Consolidated her grasp on the blankets. He came back to the bed.

"I'm still asleep," she said. "Only my dreams are never this good." There was an extraordinary amount of naked skin around. The hair on his arms and legs was so fair it was nearly transparent, his beard just beginning to be prickly. They had been fierce the night before, both of them; she hoped the tracks on his back did not sting. The thought made her shudder again. Rick's head was against her chest, his thumb absently measuring along her forearm.

"I don't think that I've ever dreamed the afterglow," he said.

"Have you dreamed of me?"

"Not when I was asleep, not like this. Sometimes we're chasing someone. Sometimes someone is chasing us. May I lick your arm?"

"You're minty-fresh; sure." It made her shudder again, her shoulders and deep inside. It made him laugh.

"What do you want," he asked, and she tensed, "in the next fifteen to twenty minutes?" He really did love her. She could deal with that span of time.

"Options?"

"Well, mmm… besides that," he traced lightly down the outside of her thigh, noting the distinction of the long muscle on the side from the one on the front, "or a shower, which would conclude with my very carefully rubbing arnica massage oil into every muscle of your back, I wondered if your coffee addiction was kicking you. I'm okay for another hour or so."

"No one has ever loved anyone as much as you love me." It was true, and the minute she said it he turned to the man of stone. Somewhat warmer than the one who had answered his door, but still: Castle at a distance.

"I imagine someone has," he said. "I imagine they have, and I hope they were loved in return. But…ah, Kate, I was going to try to keep from talking about that for a little while. To give you, give us a rest, not pour everything out in a lively, touching, yet still humorous dialogue. Or at least to distract you some other way." He blew on the arm he had just licked and she trembled. He was trying to help her hold the moment. Or to hold the moment for himself. He was trying not to go into stone again, but she knew he was keeping the world outside just as much as she was.

She needed to reach him. "I want to be here _because_ of the the touching —yet humorous— dialogue," she told him. "Because of the witty repartée. I am here because of the irrelevant remarks and the off-the-wall theories and the ADHD fantasies, and the man who loves me so much he knows sometimes coffee is more important than sex. I can probably make it another hour without coffee too, and your distraction from headaches seems to be… effective." Nothing too sensitive was at hand, but she ran her fingers over his back, and smelled his hair. She could lose herself in his scalp. She did, and his voice came from far away.

"Well, having a headache is a traditional excuse. Which I wouldn't want to give you."

She was quiet for a moment. It was still This Moment, the one she was staying in. The one she knew she did not have to leave, not yet. "Before… before we go back to the rest of the world? I want to hear everything you might want to say. I want to hear it and listen to you and take it in, and not miss anything. And I want to try to answer it if it takes years." She felt his fingers trace and curl around her cheek and chin. He heard her. "But I don't want to talk now. Rick. Soon the world is going to pour back in on us—"

"Alexis isn't due home for at least another six hours."

"She's not the part of the world I'm avoiding." She proved her point, suddenly responsible. "Will she mind? That I'm here? Should I leave before she gets back?"

"At the risk of saying something about the real world," he said, looking to her face for permission, "I think she'll be glad to see I have another responsible keeper. It weighs on her. If she sees you here, she'll want…almost as much reassurance as I do, that you'll be here again, often."

What showed in his face and the careful steadiness of his voice was, once again, how much he had hurt. How much she had hurt him. How much he was still willing to offer her. There was no light-hearted response she could make. "Come up here, so I can talk to you better," Kate said. "We'll go back to our bubble again, in a minute?"

"No one I would rather be unrealistic with." He uncurled off of her chest and lay, like her, on one elbow, their faces not quite so close as to have to breathe one another's exhaust, not too close to focus. Kate caught his free hand and brought it to her lips. Her lips remembered his fingers and made it hard to talk.

"I want both," she said. "I want _now,_ in a cloud off alone together somewhere— here, alone together for hours, for days— and I want, if I can have you with me, I want _then_, on the sidewalk, with the traffic going by and the noise — not alone, but still together. But there'll never be another morning like this, and I want you, and now, and nothing else."

She squeezed his hand, and knew he was not still all distant stone, and that he would very happily screw her brains out again. He had talents that way. But even this timeless isolated morning moment, away from Maddox, and her mother's death, away from the ruins of her career and away from her brothers and sisters in the NYPD— even here in Castle's bedroom that she had never seen before, there were things she had to pour out. She couldn't do lively, touching, yet still humorous. She wanted to say words in this perfect now that would be heard, that would go on record. So, though he was leaning in to kiss her, to give her a few more seconds in a tesseract of peace, she stopped him gently. "And I am so sorry, Castle. If I tell you I love you now it'll all be about how sorry I am, how — I want to say, now, away from the world or in it: I won't leave you. I won't tell you to leave, I won't tell you we're done, I'll try to hear what you say and why you're saying it before I tell you it's not your business. I'll try to accept that I am your business — and you are mine." She stopped to take a breath, amazed by all the words there were when the wall was down. "And if I walk away I know I can only, only do that because I will know you are watching and waiting for me to come back… Don't ever say 'you're done' to me again?"

"I had to say it," he said. "I couldn't be part of helping you die. Don't ever ask me to do that again. I can't pick your fights, I know that, but I have to be able to choose … how far away to watch you. I didn't choose to have calls from a shadowy figure who wanted to keep you off your mother's murder case, so they wouldn't kill you, too. I didn't choose it, Kate, I didn't ask to deceive you for your own good. I just listened, and he told me, and I couldn't get close enough to talk to you about that. When could I have told you that?"

"I'm sorry," Kate said. She had said so so often, but she had more depth in her heart of apology, of wanting to ease the hurt she had done— more compassion?— than she had ever felt before. She wondered what it would do to conventional morality to blame more tenderness, more love, on really good sex. "I wasn't ready for you to love me." She had to stop and smile again, right there in his face, in Castle's caring, tired, worn, loving, lustful face. It was quite a face. She wanted to eat him up, but it was time, a brief time, she hoped, to talk, before running her hand over his lips and her lips over his eyelids… "I couldn't say I heard you tell me when I was dying. I couldn't try to live and try to be there with you, too. I needed time, and then I got into the habit and thought I needed too much time. And then when I was dying yesterday I did hear you, you helped me hold on, and I couldn't not tell you. Castle—"

"You were dying, and I wasn't there."

"That will always happen." It happened to her mother. To Royce, to Montgomery. _It happened_. "But not now," she told him. "Maybe not ever, to us. We're here, now, and I'm not dead. And as much as I can, I love you, and I will never act like I don't know you love me again."


	4. Chapter 4 Early Monday morning

That undid both of them. Rick got his arms back around her, his hands going through her hair, his thumb over her lips, his other hand over her back, holding her close, drawing her closer. "Before my mind goes entirely — you just said you love me?"

"You want to hear it again?"

"Yes—"

"How can you hear me when you're doing that?"

"My ears are not involved when I'm kissing your breast—" He drew the words out, illustrating them, making her shudder.

"I do you love, you, Rick," she panted, "but can we please have sex right now instead of talking?"

"Not mutually exclusive," he suggested. His hand did something terrible.

"If you're — doing it right — it is," Kate told him.

"Prove it."

So she did, at least for the moment, so well that neither of them could speak coherently for what seemed a long time after. This time, in the daylight, she hoped she would be able to remember it better. Eventually she could at least breathe normally again. His face was amazing. He kept looking at hers. She found herself kissing him just because she could: not just to drive him wild, not just to try to take all of him she could so deep inside she would never lose him again; but in the quiet moment after, when their bodies had lost the fearful insistence they both seemed to feel. To kiss Castle for all the times she hadn't, for all the moments she had wanted to but fate, or cops, or criminals had interrupted.

"This is what you look like when you're happy," he said, his eyes trailing as far as they could. Sort of a contour view, since she was laid out on top, occupying his chest and looking down on his face. It made for a slow conversation, punctuated as they tried to remember how to speak.

"This is what I look like when I'm naked. And happy."

"I noticed that, too."

"It is possible there's a connection."

"I would always want you to look happy, when you're naked, with me," Rick said carefully, as she traced kisses around his hairline. "But also, I would like to see you happy, sometime, with clothes on. I think it might be amazing. Make the world a better place."

"I could go more places, with clothes on."

"Could we go together?"

"Are you asking me for a date?"

"I am asking for all of your dates, but we could start out a few at a time."

"Did you just —"

"No, of course not. Yes. But not now."

"I could do 'yes, but not now.'"

"Really?" Rick tried to get to one elbow, but fell off, exhausted.

"Yeah," Kate said, throwing it to the winds. "Almost certainly yes, but not now." She kissed his face, his eyes, his nose, because he looked so surprised. "Not now. Right?"

"So after Alexis's graduation, I must have come home and slipped on something, and now I'm delirious. I like this dream. Except for the bruises." They looked, together, at her left wrist. He kissed it, gently, repeatedly. "Last night, you said you'd met up with the shooter —who was named after a segregationist cabbage— he tossed you somewhere, and Ryan pulled you out and you said he got away, and you didn't care. And that you almost died. You don't usually say you almost died. I remember that part."

"Yeah." She folded her head softly onto Rick's shoulder.

"And now you look unhappy."

"Well. I did like being here in Neverneverland, And that shower and that back massage sound really good. But now I want coffee, and you want details."

"I do want details. Somehow they end with me, here. I can't say it's an entirely bad story. "

"It's not the best, except for this part."

"The 'almost' is really good. The 'died,' not good at all. I take one day off and my muse almost dies."

"You quit, not that I want to go there again. And anyway, you needed to go to Alexis's graduation."

"I really did…. One hell of a day, Kate." Rick stretched underneath her. It was delicious. She hung on with both hands, feeling the strength in him from yet a different angle. "I woke up knowing I had told you I was out of your life, and knowing my kid was formally leaving her childhood. And then my ex called and said she wouldn't make it, even though she had said she would. Thank you for not dying." Rick pulled her close, close, and she thought they would start again but then he kissed her neck. "Coffee. My love, and also coffee. And maybe clothes and happiness."

She wondered if that was too much to ask, but there was the sight of him naked, relaxed, with her, also naked, and pretty much relaxed, and it seemed possible.

And because of coffee, they were in the kitchen. Her clothes were in the washer; Kate was in one of his softest button-downs and a pair of sweatpants, and she had brushed her hair. She looked frail and ravishing and increasingly remote. Rick looked at her again. "It's not really clothes, but the happiness is gone."

"You're going to freak on me," she said finally.

"I'm not. You've used your feminine wiles or some other euphemism on me, and I have no freak left."

At least that made her smile. "Your vocabulary's coming back."

"It's only vestigial." He looked at her, and touched her arm. It was so good to have her permission to touch her. It was so good to touch her. "Can you… Are you ready to tell me a little more? If I don't freak?

"I had to talk about this some already yesterday at the station," she assured him. "I can wrap some words around it. More than I can about you."

So he went ahead and hugged her, which she seemed to like. _If both of us are worrying the other will freak, maybe it'll be okay._

"Just one thing — the coffee _is _on?"

He pointed to the two French presses, seething to one side. She stepped back from him, leaned on the counter.

"Okay…Yesterday, I got in early — Espo and Ryan had gone through the rental place's copies of drivers' licenses, found a guy who looked right, ran the license; it was a fake, but they matched the picture, right?" He nodded. "The rental place kept GPS on all their cars, we went there, Espo canvassed the right motel, he told me, we went into the guy's room. We cleared it, I know we did. Montgomery's files were all across the desk… then Maddox came, back from wherever he was hiding, in the hall I guess — he just came in like a locomotive and knocked Esposito out and tried to do the same to me. I chased him onto the roof and we fought…he tossed me and I went over a parapet and … I thought I heard your voice telling me to hang on, but I guess that was Ryan. He pulled me back to safety and … and there was Gates."

"Why? Did she come for the take-down? I thought if sunlight hit her she turned to ash." Rick could see in her face that whatever was in his mind was nothing like what had happened. She stopped meeting his eyes. "Kate?"

"She came with Ryan."

"I thought Ryan was with you." Ryan was always with her and Esposito. Keeping her back. Three of them, it had always been three of them, the real musketeers and he was the kid on the beat, even after four years… "Oh, no, Kate, what—"

"I did something stupid, all right?" Now she was farther apart from him than she had been when he'd left her apartment, when they were over. She began to fill a cup, her hand trembling as she poured. "I did something really stupid, but I also understand why I did it. I don't know if I would do it again, I don't know." Her voice was speeding up, louder. "Esposito and I went on our own, because I didn't trust anyone in the department not to stop me, not to be helping _him." _She exhaled sharply, and sipped the coffee. "We left Ryan at the Twelfth to keep an eye on the car's GPS. I didn't trust anyone else to do it. We didn't tell anyone but him where we were going, and we didn't have backup. And it was stupid, I know, please don't tell me what I already know. You already told me that when you left my apartment, but I wouldn't listen. You said you wouldn't freak."

_So wrong about that._ _And just who sounded closer to the edge now? _The silence in the kitchen went on for days as Rick tried to understand what he had just heard. It was not what he had thought he was hearing, he had seen Ryan with them, in his mind's eye, watching the three of them go through the apartment, uniforms helping secure the scene -no. Rewrite. "So Ryan wasn't with you when you were falling?"

"Maddox threw me and I went over the parapet—"

"The roof?"

"Yeah. The edge of the roof."

Rick took a deep breath, as unnoticeably as he could. _Not freaking. Just screaming on the inside._ She gave him the coffee cup in her hand, and poured another one for herself.

"I was lucky, I caught myself, I hung on. Maddox seemed to be enjoying watching me hang there. I think he heard Ryan and them coming, he took off instead of pushing me. He shouldn't have gloated, I don't think he's read the Evil Overlord List."

"Nice," Rick said, on autopilot. Nothing else came out.

"Ryan pulled me up just as my hand cramped and I began to fall. He could not have come a moment later." Kate's voice was remote, as she looked at her fingertips. He now they were saw were scratched. The ones that had made marks along his back, that probably had his DNA under the nails if you wanted to go there... "You were completely right, Castle. The case killed me. I knew that as I knew I was about to fall. And then I was alive after all. Kind of a reset button for my priorities."

"Esposito?" he asked. Surely he would be able to think again soon.

"Banged up, but all right. The hotel manager, too. Maddox was gone. Breathe, Castle."

He tried to. "What part of 'Almost died' did I not understand last night?"

She quirked that small smile he loved to see, but it came to him from far away. "The balance of your mind was somewhere else? So Espo and I had to explain ourselves in Gates's office, which I guess we did, sort of. I don't think she knows why we went after him, not really. She knew he was my shooter, but not the whole thing."

"And Gates was all right?"

"Not what you would call… no, not all right. She suspended us both for a month."

"Well, shit."

"And I resigned."

"You what?"

"I quit, Castle. Nikki Heat has left the force. You didn't sleep with a cop last night. And if you say you noticed something was missing, I will -"

He found that he was holding her once again, with as little sense of volition as he had the night before, spilling coffee on both of them. And Kate was smoothing his back.

"Hey. Hey, Castle. Rick. It's all right." "How can it be all right?" Rick found himself asking, into her hair. "You've been— almost half your life— since you were in college —"

"Says the guy who wanted me off my mother's case."

"I did. I do. But -They're not the same thing.—"

"Well, maybe—"

"Sorry. Not my business —" _Anything to keep from hearing once again that it was her life. "_ You were right, the other night. It is your life. But, damn it, Beckett-"

"It is my life, and even if you love me, it's still _my life._ But I said I love you, and that means I need at least to listen, to hear you out, because it's not just my life anymore. You get a say." Kate looked up at him. "No wonder I never want to tell anyone that. It's not just that people who love me, whom I love — it's not just that they die. Sometimes they want to move to Boston. But when you —since you— the way you love me doesn't make me less."

After he finished crushing her closer, until he remembered she maybe had a broken rib, he pulled his face from the warm quiet place in her hair and look at her hard. It was Kate, it was really Beckett, and she looked fine. Tired, worn, too thin, but fine. Not angry, not unhinged. Someone who had talked about love without slithering through his hands and eeling away. Maybe someone saner than he had ever seen before, with those eyes, those cheekbones…

"If you hear from your Mr. Smith again, will you tell me?" she asked. "Even if my life is your business, even if you have to interrupt, you'll tell me?"

"Will it be easier to get your attention? Will you still speak to me if you get angry?"

"I don't think the boys'll be interrupting us again, and yes, I promised that and I meant it, before you ravished me with your masculine wiles and—"

Castle's phone chirped.


	5. Chapter 5 About 8 Monday morning

"Well, who is it?" Kate asked. She went to the table by the door for her own phone, which was chirping too. _Tiny chirping toes in the door. Attached to charging elephants. I did have twelve hours of perfect sex. _

"From last night through this morning: Ryan. Meredith. Alexis. Meredith. …Ah, umm. Esposito. Meredith. Lanie. Ryan." But his face was strange. She raised an eyebrow. "And," Rick finished, "someone named Vicky Gates."

"What? That's not her office line. Why would she call you?"

"I cannot imagine. To tell me you'd resigned and my presence was no longer required?"

"To talk to me? No, that doesn't make any sense."

"I guess the easiest way to find out would be to call her back." He shook his head. "Who's on your list?"

"In the same order: Ryan. Ryan. Lanie. Esposito. Lanie. Ryan." She loved these people. She wished they were at the bottom of the sea. All it needed was her father, who would notice she hadn't called Sunday afternoon eventually. _Sorry, Dad, I was hanging 10 stories over the street. Things I will not tell him. There's a long list_.

Castle's voice drew her back. "How about I call everyone else and you call Meredith?"

"It's not good that that sounds just fine, is it?"

"I have a safe we could put these in on the way back to the bedroom," Rick suggested. He didn't even need to waggle his eyebrows. Kate could have hugged him. So she did, because she could. _I never understood those completely attached-at-the-hip couples before. I bet we're going to be nauseating. _

"What's your deal, here?" she asked. "You're not in trouble. And what are you going to tell Alexis?"

"My partners are in trouble," he said. "I've never been one of you, which actually makes it harder. But there's nothing Gates can do to me. I wasn't there. And if there is _anything _I can say to smooth Gates down—"

"Don't try," Kate said. "Above all, do not mention the mayor. Please."

"Hey. Not unless he calls me first. Does Gates know I told you I quit?"

Kate went over the past day in her mind. "No, I don't think so." _Did she hear me calling your name? _"Or Ryan might have said something, if she asked."

"Do you want to be around, when I speak to her? No more deals behind your back?"

"I trust you," Kate said, which, sadly, she didn't. Not entirely, about about his desire to try to keep her safe. "But, umm, yeah, it might be interesting."

"It might be awful."

"I'm used to her brand of awful. And maybe you could use the moral support."

"Or you could offer immoral support—"

"Please don't make me think about sex and Captain Gates at the same time. I'll call Lanie, and Javi, before you call her?"

"And I'll call Ryan, and Meredith can wait."

"And- what areyou going to tell Alexis?"

"The truth, of course. But not the details. Pretty much what I'm going to tell everyone else, if that's all right with you?" He hesitated, turning her hand over in his. She could see him trying not to stare at the bruises. Which he kissed again. "What should I tell them?"

"I'm here. I'm all right. I'm not injured or upset. I came here yesterday and I am very, very much all right. " The last words ended in a purr she had almost no control over. She could feel a tension in his shoulders. "What, Rick? I don't mind people knowing we're happy." _And they have bets to settle._

"I am concerned. About your reputation."

"You're really sweet."

"I also don't want you to hurt me next week."

"Are you afraid I'll come to my senses and repudiate you? Do you want me to prove how okay I am with this _us_ that's finally happened?" _Oh, please, let me._

"Oh, God, yes, please, I do… but I'd like breakfast, first." Kate followed him back to the kitchen. "Do you want a day-old bagel?"

"Yes, with everything. Rick? You still look… not quite happy. Not as happy as I am. You really think I'll want this not to have happened?

He put the bagels and the cutting board down on the counter and faced her. "Not that. But …I guess I want to give you a chance to think, before -"

"I did all my thinking yesterday, hanging from the roof. It concentrated my mind wonderfully." Then she felt a crack opening up in the universe and had to speak before it engulfed her. "Are you not- do you not want - me to be here?"

"No. No. no, Kate, never believe I am not happy you're here, now, last night, tomorrow. Always." His voice cracked, but the universe healed. She couldn't say who melted into whose arms, but there was no distance between them. "I have wanted you, here, in my life, so long, and I've given up the hope enough times —"

"I'm sorry —"

"Shh, I know, it's all right, it's all right now," he whispered. Her heart broke.

"I want to be here, with you —"

"We are here, we're together, it's all right…" Some kind of sorrow from them both, and some kind of reassurance. "I don't want you to go, I don't want you to leave this moment, but you have a life so much bigger than mine. I can't keep you here, and I'm afraid you'll try to make yourself stay. I love it that you can give up your mother's case, I'm still so frightened I'll lose you. But I don't know- do you know who you are if you leave all of it?"

"I want to be with you—" She needed him to understand.

He kissed the corner of her mouth. "Whoever you are, I'm yours, you're mine, don't worry."

"But you worry—

"So much," he said, so quietly she almost couldn't hear him. "So many rabbit holes, Kate."

_The kindest way of saying he's worried I'm crazy right now that I can imagine._ This entered her mind without rancor, which was amazing. "I know you worry. I think it's okay."

"I'm sorry to be-"

"I know you worry. I don't mind."

"You don't?"

"Well, not today. You've gone to so much trouble to gain my confidence in the last few hours- I mean, of course, the last four years, but -" the time he had put in at the Twelfth, the cups of coffee, the endless hundreds of ways Castle had shown her his— _affection. Devotion. Patience. Oh, yeah, those too, but oh, his hands, his mouth —_ She knew Rick could feel her entirely smug smile spread across her face, because he pulled away to look at her. His own face answered her happiness, and he sighed deeply, before going back to where his lips had been on her throat.

"Enough worrying for today," she heard him say softly.

In the pieces of her mind that were not telling her (with deep satisfaction) how Castle's hands felt (moving gently on her back, easing the muscles, pressing her bonelessly against him), Kate tried to leave him some space. Some space to have the fear and the worry, so she could try to soothe them. "I'm still in therapy. You can come too?"

"That's not the worst idea I've ever heard, but I'd rather you had your time. Someone else can decide —"

"If I'm sane?"

"I didn't say that."

Rather than tell him she was pretty sure he had, Kate thrust her mouth against his and took control of his tongue until at least one of them gasped. "What about if you considered that I was taking a vacation?" she suggested, trying not to sound like she meant one where she would wear silk, or nothing but sunscreen, which was hard because that was what she meant, except she was trying for socially-acceptable. _Clothes AND happiness._

"Okay, yes, maybe. You did that once. Under extreme duress."

It was interesting how, though he was still getting his breath back, Rick's hands were doing perfectly well. Kate tried to ignore how strong his fingers were through the sweatpants. "You don't have to shoot me to get me to take time off."

"Okay, perhaps that's true—" he really liked her collarbones. "I would like to have a vacation with you-"

"You offer some - powerful - incentives-" the discussion was getting away, which was hardly surprising, or his fault, or unpleasant, but— she tore her mouth from Rick's. "AND day-old bagels, at least you offered them before?"

"Right! Right, food." He kissed her forehead and they moved apart. Kate refilled the kettle, clicked it on, and went to grind more coffee.

"So what _are_ you going to tell Alexis?"

Rick showed her his phone. Alexis's text was terse, late the evening before: Dad, I'm fine, party all right, Mom needs to get off my back ,XOXO A. Kate watched as he typed back: Glad you had good party. Your mom typical, water off yr back? Kate is here. Okay for lunch? Love you. "I'm hoping she's still asleep at her party."

"You really meant it about the truth, not the details."

"It'll do for a text.


	6. Chapter 6

Author's note: The tale grew in the telling, and since it was a little cute one-shot it had no timestamps tying it down. Which it now desperately needs, thrashing and fainting in coils. This all grew in response to WriteChristineR's lovely _Constant _(.net/s/8097715/1/Constant) although my Ryan may vary and I hope she forgives me.

Also the best set of timestamps in the world are in Muppet_47's _Waiting Game _(.net/s/7495021/1/Waiting_Game_)

**Monday Morning, about 8:30 - Lanie's apartment**

Javi was awake. Lanie kissed him on the forehead. "Coffee?"

"You know, you're beautiful in the daylight, too."

He looked, in her mother's expression, like he'd been dragged through a knot-hole. She was still running on old med student-style nerves, had been zipping around for the two hours since she had woken him to check that he was just sleeping. "Damn it, Javi."

"Bedside manner, much? No wonder you work with dead people."

"What you're gonna be…" she couldn't finish the threat. She'd seen him beaten up before; that little water-boarding escapade with Lockwood hadn't left him looking good but today was somehow worse. She brought them both coffee, got back under the covers. Which he had stolen, so she took his coffee away, with vengeful satisfaction, putting the cups on the bedside table and hauling the sheet and the blanket and her poor bedspread back into place. Better now, no drafts. She returned his coffee.

"It's 8:30. I'm calling Beckett."

"Don't be hard on her, Lanie."

This was not what he usually sounded like. "What do you mean?"

"You've been angry all night."

"I have, just about. But not at her. Much."

"Yeah. It took more than just her to get me in trouble."

Lanie sighed. It was actually better, not having to argue all the sides in her head. "This particular time, you couldn't have done it by yourself. Shit, Javier, you're not this kind of officer. You're not a loose cannon, you're sane and 'by the book' and 'chain of command,' that's how you got where you are."

"Chain of command," he said.

"Beckett?"

"Yeah. But not entirely."

"Montgomery."

"Yeah."

"He was about keeping her safe."

"She'd have gone off by herself, you know. She was that far out there. Ryan didn't help, telling her she was out of line. He should have come with us."

And somewhere out there, Lanie knew, Ryan was telling _himself_ he'd been right, and how they were ever to get past this she didn't know. She picked up her phone. Kate answered on the first ring.

**Monday Morning, about 8:30**

So Alexis was in the loop. Kate knew she ought to worry about the daughter whose father she was planning to seduce again as soon as possible but she needed food, and at any given time one of them seemed concerned about the outside world. The real world. The people they needed to call. It passed back and forth. "You're being the responsible adult," she realized, not really intending to say so.

"My kitchen. I'm the host."He was putting together what appeared to be a high-end deli platter for her, smoked salmon and red onion and what looked like real, ripe tomato and _capers_, and she suddenly realized she hadn't eaten since early the day before. "I hope for your sake you like onion?"

"Yes." She watched as he put roughly twice the cream cheese she would have considered enough on each bagel half. It looked great. Sesame bagel, her favorite.

"And you had a hard day, yesterday, it can be my turn. Although I seem to get distracted rather easily."

"And you don't like the look of the day coming any more than I do."

"We seem to have agreed you won't throw your phone away —"

"Or yours—"

"That was another thing I was thinking about yesterday. They're my friends, too. It was worse than my divorces, I never liked my in-laws. Last summer —

"When I wasn't there—"

Rick nodded. "When you were getting better, I saw what it was like for them to lose somebody, even temporarily. You make a lot of difference in that department, Kate, —I'm not second-guessing you here, this was yesterday— I was wondering what it would be like without me. Because I knew it would be like high school, it would be hard for them to be friends with me if you and I broke up." He stuck the analogy out there and she didn't disagree. Work-husbands and work-wives. " But you're much more important, integral. This is going to be like putting a harpoon through the Twelfth. If you were going back, you and Esposito at the same time, would they keep your team together?"

"I'm not sure. It would depend on how much Gates wanted to punish us. Seriously, to transfer us out of her jurisdiction, to bust me down a rank? Or she could just put a nasty note in our permanent records."

"All that takes a lot of administration?"

"She doesn't have to do a formal inquiry to suspend us for a month. But that doesn't mean she won't, if she gets a sniff of how much we were covering up."

"Can she do an inquiry, if you've resigned?"

"It'll be a lot harder for her to get results."

"Which wouldn't have influenced you—"

"No," Kate said. "I wasn't thinking that clearly at the time. I just saw that I could go, and not come back. I want out of all that, Castle. I want out of —" she paused. More than she had considered. "I want out of not being able to trust anyone."

"Please eat," he said. She hadn't noticed the plate he'd put in her hand.

"Will you stop looking so sad?"

"Maybe I should eat, too."

Her phone rang. "Lanie!"

"Kate. Are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm at Castle's. I'm sorry I didn't call you back sooner—"

"Sooner as in, 'after someone tried to kill you?' As in 'before you got the bright idea you needed to go after him yourself, so he could try to kill you? Or as in, 'after you threw you badge in Gates's face'?"

Kate could hear another voice in the background of Lanie's call. "I asked you not to go hard on her."

"Esposito. Is he okay?" Kate asked.

"About as well as someone with a concussion and a beating gets," Lanie said. " I woke him up every two hours last night but I don't think he's too badly concussed. You didn't get knocked out?"

"I don't think so. Maybe a cracked rib?"

"And you were lucky it wasn't every bone in your body."

"I know." They were silent. "You're angry at me."

"I'm angry at everybody."

"I think I'd rather you yelled at me."

"Javier seemed to think you had had your fair share from Captain Gates. More than fair."

"He tell you I quit?"

"Yeah. I don't think it's a good thing, but I can understand it."

"I'm sorry."

"Your badge, not mine."

"I meant getting Javi hurt. In trouble."

"Yeah. Same thing, I don't think both of you going off alone was a good idea but I can understand it. I don't think he was an idiot to go with you, either, or to keep it quiet."

"Thank you, I think."

"So you're at Castle's? What's up with that? Javi said he was off the team."

"Yeah… Umm, that was true, but it didn't last."

"He really needed to be at Alexis's graduation. Although in retrospect, if you've gotten killed, I doubt he would have felt better."

"No, that wasn't it. Although he really did. No. There was stuff. Ummm…"

She could almost hear Lanie's antennae come to bear. "Just tell me, Kate, I could use some good news."

"Umm. I spent the night here. At his apartment. With him." Despite everything Kate felt herself curling up inside with happiness. "It's all good."

"You really going to try to get away with that? (She spent the night with him)," Lanie said, half to her, half, presumably to Javi. "What's all good? (Hush, wait a minute, she's talking.)"

"Him. Me. Us. Really good." _We're dating for possibly the rest of eternity._

There was a tussling noise from Lanie's end of the phone; then she heard Esposito's voice, "Damn it, Beckett, I put my badge on the line for you and he gets the girl?"

"It sounds like you have a girl of your own, there," said Kate, smiling. "You okay?"

"I'm told I am, yeah," his voice sounded a little hoarse but strong. "Dr. Parish here says I can't do anything heavy lifting for the next week or so, but I don't feel too bad. You?"

"Rib. Maybe my shoulders could be a little better but on the whole, fine. Look, Javi — I need to say 'thank you' and 'I'm sorry' —"

"You need to not say any of that right now. Heavy lifting."

"Later, then?"

"Ideally not," Esposito told her firmly. "I'm more sorry we didn't get the bastard. So you're gonna stay with Castle for awhile?"

"I haven't thought about it —"

"Because Maddox is still out there."


End file.
